To Listen is To Love
LETTER BY GRACE POUCH
To listen is to love.
To be heard and understood is to experience love.
When you know you won’t be interrupted, questioned, or judged, you speak differently. When someone’s tuned in, you turn up your heart’s transmission signal.
Most listeners allocate half their attention to their own thoughts and responses. When someone gives you and your words full attention — total presence — the air is charged with eternity. Surely God is in this place.
Someone listens to me this way for an hour each Wednesday. Honestly, it’s hard to take. I want to turn the tables and ask questions, but that’s not what we’re there for. So I talk till the words name something in my soul that hasn’t been named before — or maybe it has, and I’ve forgotten and need to name it again. I talk and pause and talk again and notice my eyes are wet. I look up to find a face accepting me, the face of Christ in my friend. And my tears are like living water to some parched part of my heart that I’d long given up on as dead. Our session ends and it occurs to me that I’m no longer in the irritable rush I was in an hour ago.
We don’t understand the power of listening or its centrality to spiritual growth. We underestimate the immense treasures we can give and receive through listening — to each other, to God, and to our own hearts.
Thank God listening is learnable. There are spaces we can practice — formal spaces with others like listening groups and cohort programs (some of these are listed below) and informal spaces like a prayer chair or dinner table. I’m quite sure Jesus would be delighted to teach us how to listen if we ask.
So, Lord, we do ask… teach us how to listen — wholeheartedly listen — to you, to each other, to our own hearts and bodies. You waited to speak from the burning bush until you saw that Moses had turned to pay attention. Help us then to turn and give you our attention, and to make space for others to hear you in our attentiveness to them.
Grace Pouch
Content Manager
P.S. The Renovaré Book Club just kicked off with an intro week. Reading begins in earnest this Monday, September 30, so it’s still a great time to hop into this four-book journey of renewal.
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LET’S DIVE IN...
CURATED BY BRIAN MORYKON
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1.
Last year, we piloted a program called Becoming a Listening Presence in Everyday Life with Renovaré Institute alumni. It was transformative for many, so we’re offering it again. This time applications are open to anyone. Learn more about this 26-week whole-hearted learning experience. Space is limited to fifty participants.
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2.
Renovaré Listening Groups set the table for honest sharing and deep listening to each other and to God through an intentional 90-minute structure that forgoes advice-giving and fixing people. You can experience a Listening Group online for free. Learn more and view meeting times.
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In an essay on building a bridge between Catholics and Protestants, Trevor Hudson writes, “The unusual privilege of listening to another person’s experience of prayer from a different church background has much power to break down previously held prejudices and mistaken stereotypes.”
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4.
Michael P. Nichols’s The Lost Art of Listening is a practical book on becoming a better listener, especially in relationships. It’s not from a Christian perspective, so eat the meat and spit out the bones, but I found it quite helpful. The audiobook is excellent. (Pro-tip for those in the States — the audiobook may be available to borrow free from your local library via an app called Hoopla.)
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5.
Nathan Foster draws on the life of Jesus to invite us into the practice of availability and vulnerability in this article from our vault.
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6.
The more time we spend listening to God’s voice, the more familiar the Voice becomes. Renovaré’s resource Learning to Hear God (available as a free PDF or a physical booklet) has two exercises to help you learn by experience to recognize the voice of God and enjoy thedivine friendship that we were made for.
Brian Morykon
Director of Communications
WORTH QUOTING
“Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”
– Henri J.M. Nouwen
Bread for the Journey
(source)
TO CONTEMPLATE
Ivan Meštrovic (sculptor)
(source)
From Grace Pouch: Usually we see the Annunciation depicted in a way that highlights what Mary saw. I like this one with Gabriel whispering in her ear. It reminds me that she must have been a person who already had her ears open to hearing and her heart open to obeying.
TO PONDER
Recall a specific moment in your life when you felt deeply heard, understood, and accepted by a person who loves you. Allow that sense to permeate your picture of God.